The Value Of Tours In The Post-Pandemic Environment

At the end of 2019, Jeremy Reynolds wrote an article for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that examined the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO) European tour at that time. Fast forward to 2022 and the PSO is heading back out on a nine-city European tour and Reynolds is along for the ride and processing everything from this new vantage point.

He sets up what will be a series of tour articles by asking questions about what makes touring worthwhile and whether or not the pandemic has changed traditional valuations.

I’m very curious to see how the articles unfold. Regular readers already know that I have what might be best defined as free from pretense. I do believe tours have value, but I also acknowledge that traditional methods to measure that value aren’t as quantifiable as they should be. Nutshell: how much does navel-gazing influence the valuation process.

The first article in Reynolds’ series includes perspective from sources that, perhaps unsurprisingly, find a great deal of value in touring and you’ll hear their reasons why. While there are no surprises here, I’m interested to see if the series provides juxtaposition to any of those views and/or attempts to find real-time examples that not only support or refute but identify ways the pandemic may being changing those benchmarks.